Theatrical[edit]

Evidence for the first adaptation of 2 Henry VI is found during the Restoration, when, in 1681, John Crowne created a two-part play entitled Henry the Sixth, The First Part and The Misery of Civil War.^[43] Henry comprised Acts 1–3 of 2 Henry VI focusing on the death of Gloucester, Misery adapted the last two acts of 2 Henry VI and much of 3 Henry VI. Writing at the time of Popish Plot, Crowne, who was a devout royalist, used his adaptation to warn about the danger of allowing England to descend into another civil war, which would be the case should the Whig party rise to power. As such, the scenes of Jack Cade's rebellion, as depicted in Misery, were much more violent than in Shakespeare, with painted backdrops of people on fire and children impaled on pikes. Crowne also rewrote the roles of Gloucester and Winchester to make Gloucester more saint-like and taintless, and Winchester even more villainous. He also linked the murder of Gloucester to the recent assassination of Edmund Berry Godfrey, an incident which had led to an outbreak of anti-Catholic hysteria in London in 1678.^[44] By creating this link, Crowne was aiming to enhance anti-Catholic sentiment even more and ensure the passing of the Exclusion Bill, which would prevent the Catholic James Stuart, Duke of York succeeding his brother, the Protestant Charles II. To this end, Crowne rewrote the murder scene to give more characterisation to the three murderers, who were depicted as devout, but cold-blooded Catholics.^[45]


Two more adaptations followed in 1723. The first was Humfrey Duke of Gloucester by Ambrose Philips, which used about thirty lines from Acts 1–3 of 2 Henry VI and was performed at Drury Lane. In a possible comment on the politics of Crowne's adaptation, Phillips dedicated his version to William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, a leading Whig politician. The second 1723 adaptation, also performed at Drury Lane, was Theophilus Cibber's King Henry VI: A Tragedy, which used Act 5 of 2 Henry VI and Acts 1 and 2 of 3 Henry VI, and which featured his father Colley Cibber as Winchester.


In 1817, Edmund Kean appeared in J.H. Merivale's Richard Duke of York; or the Contention of York and Lancaster, which used material from all three Henry VI plays, but removed everything not directly related to York. Material from 2 Henry VI included the lamentation about the loss of Anjou and Maine, the conflict between Gloucester and Winchester, the murder of Gloucester, the death of Winchester (where all Warwick's dialogue is reassigned to York), and Cade's rebellion.


Following Merivale's example, Robert Atkins adapted all three plays into a single piece for a performance at The Old Vic in 1923 as part of the celebrations for the tercentenary of the First Folio. Guy Martineau played Henry and Esther Whitehouse played Margaret. Atkins himself played York.


The success of the 1951–1953 Douglas Seale stand-alone productions of each of the individual plays in Birmingham prompted him to present the three plays together at the Old Vic in 1957 under the general title The Wars of the Roses. Barry Jackson adapted the text, altering the trilogy into a two-part play; 1 Henry VI and 2 Henry VI were combined (with almost all of 1 Henry VI eliminated) and 3 Henry VI was edited down. Seale again directed, with Paul Daneman again appearing as Henry and Alfred Burke as Gloucester, alongside Barbara Jefford as Margaret and Derek Godfrey as York.


The production which is usually credited with establishing the reputation of the play in the modern theatre is John Barton and Peter Hall's 1963/1964 RSC production of the tetralogy, adapted into a three-part series, under the general title The Wars of the Roses, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The first play (entitled simply Henry VI) featured a much shortened version of 1 Henry VI and half of 2 Henry VI (up to the death of Beaufort). The second play (entitled Edward IV) featured the second half of 2 Henry VI and a shortened version of 3 Henry VI, which was then followed by a shortened version of Richard III as the third play. In all, 1,450 lines written by Barton were added to 6,000 lines of original Shakespearean material, with a total of 12,350 lines removed.^[46] The production starred David Warner as Henry, Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret, Donald Sinden as York and Paul Hardwick as Gloucester. Barton and Hall were both especially concerned that the plays reflect the contemporary political environment, with the civil chaos and breakdown of society depicted in the plays mirrored in the contemporary milieu, by events such as the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The directors allowed these events to reflect themselves in the production, arguing that "we live among war, race riots, revolutions, assassinations, and the imminent threat of extinction. The theatre is, therefore, examining fundamentals in staging the Henry VI plays."^[47] They were also influenced by politically focused literary theory of the time; both had attended the 1956 London visit of Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble, both were subscribers to Antonin Artaud's theory of "Theatre of Cruelty", and Hall had read an English translation of Jan Kott's influential Shakespeare Our Contemporary in 1964 prior to its publication in Britain. Both Barton and Hall were also supporters of E.M.W. Tillyard's 1944 book Shakespeare's History Plays, which was still a hugely influential text in Shakespearian scholarship, especially in terms of its argument that Shakespeare in the tetraology was advancing the Tudor myth.^[48]


Another major adaptation was staged in 1987 by the English Shakespeare Company, under the direction of Michael Bogdanov. This touring production opened at the Old Vic, and subsequently toured for two years, performing at, amongst other places, the Panasonic Globe Theatre in Tokyo, Japan (as the inaugural play of the arena), the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy and at the Adelaide Festival in Adelaide, Australia. Following the structure established by Barton and Hall, Bogdanov combined a heavily edited 1 Henry VI and the first half of 2 Henry VI into one play (Henry VI), and the second half of 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI into another (Edward IV), and followed them with an edited Richard III. Also like Barton and Hall, Bogdanov concentrated on political issues, although he made them far more overt than had his predecessors. For example, played by June Watson, Margaret was closely modelled after the British Prime Minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, even to the point of having similar clothes and hair. Likewise, Paul Brennan's Henry was closely modelled after King Edward VIII, before his abdication.^[49] Jack Cade, played by Michael Pennington was presented as a punk with spiked hair and wearing a shirt depicting a Union Jack with a white rose in the middle, and during the Cade rebellion, football hooligan chants were heard. Indeed, the Cade rebellion in general was modelled on the National Front. Bogdanov also employed frequent anachronisms and contemporary visual registers, in an effort to show the relevance of the politics to the contemporary period. The production was noted for its pessimism as regards contemporary British politics, with some critics feeling the political resonances were too heavy handed.^[50] However, the series was a huge box office success. Alongside Watson and Brennen, the play starred Barry Stanton as York and Colin Farrell as Gloucester.


Another adaptation of the tetralogy by the Royal Shakespeare Company followed in 1988, performed at the Barbican. Adapted by Charles Wood and directed by Adrian Noble, the Barton/Hall structure was again followed, reducing the trilogy to two plays by dividing 2 Henry VI in the middle. The resulting trilogy was entitled The Plantagenets, with the individual plays entitled Henry VI, The Rise of Edward IV and Richard III, His Death. Starring Ralph Fiennes as Henry, Penny Downie as Margaret, Anton Lesser as York and David Waller as Gloucester, the production was extremely successful with both audiences and critics.


Michael Bogdanov and the English Shakespeare Company presented a different adaptation at the Swansea Grand Theatre in 1991, using the same cast as on the touring production. All eight plays from the history cycle were presented over a seven night period, with each play receiving one performance only, and with only twenty eight actors portraying the nearly five hundred roles. Whilst the other five plays in the cycle were unadapted, the Henry VI plays were combined into two, using the Barton/Hall structure, with the first named The House of Lancaster and the second, The House of York.


In 2000, Edward Hall presented the trilogy as a two-part series at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury. Hall followed the Jackson/Seale structure, combining 1 Henry VI and 2 Henry VI into one play which all but eliminated 1 Henry VI and following this with an edited version of 3 Henry VI. This production was noted for how it handled the violence of the play. The set was designed to look like an abattoir, but rather than attempt to present the violence realistically (as most productions do), Hall went in the other direction; presenting the violence symbolically. Whenever a character was decapitated or killed, a red cabbage was sliced up whilst the actor mimed the death beside it.


In 2001, Tom Markus directed an adaptation of the tetralogy at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Condensing all fours plays into one, Markus named the play Queen Margaret, doing much the same with the character of Margaret as Merivale had done with York. Margaret was played by Gloria Biegler, Henry by Richard Haratine, York by Lars Tatom and Gloucester by Charles Wilcox.